Samsung Press Conference Debuts Series 9 and Series 5 Laptops – CES 2012 Update

Today we are at the Samsung 2012 Press Release Event at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas and this place is packed.

Sitting five rows from the front in the Lando Ballroom, we were fortunate enough to get VIP passes and I should have brought an interpreter.

Myself and Karen, our gorgeous Associate Editor, are the only ones in this area that speak English.  Six minutes to showtime and there are already dozens of international camera crews to my right.

The excitement of the atmosphere in events like this is indescribable as people from all over the world squeeze in with laptops in hand and video/camera crews at their side vying to be the first to get the Samsung news out to the world.

Samsung Consumer Electronic Division President Boo–Keun Yoon opened the show with some statistics that might surprise you.  Last year alone, Samsung not only sold two televisions per second and an amazing total of 3 billion cell phones, but also, it was their third year straight in refrigerator and appliance sales.  Follow along as we update this post with Samsung’s theme for 2012… Pushing Bounderies.

Next up to bat is Samsung America President Tim Baxter who spelled this years vision out for Samsung and carries on with a theme that has become familiar with Samsung in the past year…content and interaction.  From new Apps to very close relationships at the production levels and even to an Angry birds channel and Apps, Samsungs main goal is to bring things together through interactive apps and ideas.

This years hardware started to roll out with Samsungs new ultra-thin OLED television which virtually eliminates picture blur completely and also contains something new to future proof these televisions, an uprade slot on the back of the unit.  With this slot, Samsung will be able to supply unit owners with performance upgrades, thus achieving significant cost savings for the consumer. Did you know that 90% of all LED sales were Samsung?

SAMSUNG SERIES 9 UPDATE AND SERIES 5 DEBUT

Samsung unveiled both their updated Series 9 and new Series 5 and for those who initially complained of the Series 9 innate ability to retain fingerprints, fret no more!  Over 30, 000 hours of work have gone into the new Series 9 and it is being offered in both 13″ and 15″ versions.  The new Series 9 (shown below) is only 1/2″ thick, weighs in at 2.5lbs, sports a 1600×900 LED screen as well as an Intel i5 processor and 128GB SSD, all for only $1400.

The Samsung Series 5 Ultra is also a very interesting entry into the notebook foray,comes in 13″ and 14″ sizes, are less than an inch thick and weigh less than 4lbs.  They will be configurable with either HDD or SSD, feature a 1600 x 900 high resolution screen and are expected to run at a very affordable $899 for the 13″ without SSD, $1099 with SSD and $950 for the 14″ basic configuaration sans SSD.